Day 8 Oct 25 2009 - Lawn discussions, temples and our first Bollywood experience

After a busy day on Saturday, Sunday was the day to take things slower and to relax. Around noon time we - Annamarie, Mapje, Soon and I - decided to spontaneously join Eva and Dominik on their visit to Indicorps. When we arrived there, the fellows of Indicorps just had their lunch and invited us to join them. (The Indicorps fellows are usually people in their 20s with an Indian background who live outside of India in countries like US, UK, etc., who come here to spend one year doing social work in India.)

After lunch a lawn discussion on how to write a newspaper column was scheduled and we learned what makes a good column - know your audience, show rather than tell, etc. Apart from that we also got a quick lesson on how to keep our energy levels balanced - by eating Ragi - which is as easy to prepare as tea. After an energizing exercise - Hands Up!, Clap your Hands, Knees bend! Buns out!...., we took off to finally see two of the temples in Ahmedabad.

On the way to the entrance gate we we met two Indian teachers who study Gandhi's philosophie. We chat for a little while and they recommend us to see two temples nearby in Ahmedabad. Apart from that they also tell us a bit about Hindi and Gujarati and how to easily distinguish the two. While Hindi has a line across all characters, Gujarati has not. So that's an easy way to tell'em apart and from know on we will for sure know what is Hindi and what is Gujarati.

The first temple is only a 16 Rupees rikshaw ride away and is very very impressive. To our astonishment the temple is hardly visited by anybody, so we are almost by ourselves there. The temple features extensive decorations and carvings - features we have seen here on may of the old buildings -. One cannot help but wonder how many people and how much time it must have taken to complete all of this. The 2nd temple is just a 5 minute footwalk away so we do not bother to take a rishaw there. Our way leads us through a park, where again we are a welcome sight for the locals and we ourselves get a chance to take many new pictures of the people of Ahmedabad, who more than once have impressed us with their openness and friendliness.

The second temple is not as old as the first one but far more colorful than the first. It is also much more frequented by the local people who come here to pray or to present their offerings to the gods.

At night it's Bollywood time. Annamarie, Mapje, Dominik, Soon and me head for the local Drive In movie theater which also features regular seats for the car-less folks like us. So first we had to wait quite a while before we could buy the tickets, then we had to queue again for entry into the movie theater. While waiting we were approached by many people who were just curious where we came from or why we came to see a movie that was actually in Hindi. The feature movie was BLUE, a movie which proved our cliché of Indian movies to be true - much music and dance - we enjoyed it very much, the athmosphere at the movie theater more than the actual movie though. An experience not to be missed!

Day 3 Oct 20 2009 - Finally we meet our clients!

After having received Gavin's and Arjun's briefing on Monday, Tuesday finally is the big day - we meet our clients. Based on our applications and profiles all of our team have been assigned to one of four projects, with two or three of us as a project team. We all have read our statements of work multiple times but today is the day that we get face to face with our clients for the very first time, quite an exciting moment. The four project / project teams are:

• Eva & Dominik: Indicorps
• Rich, Mapje & Annamarie: Ashoka
• Soon & Stefan: Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA)
• Susanne & Per: Tribal Development Department of Gujarat

Following a brief welcome by Gavin and an overview of IBM India by Col. Pandey, each of our clients introduces their respective organisation and the projects that we will be working in. Not a single one that one would not love to be part of but since we all have limited time here in India, we will focus soley on our assigned projects - which does not mean that we will not have a chance to visit the other project teams at their projects.

Soon and I will be working together with SEWA, the self employed women's association - an organsation we so far know knew little about. SEWA in short is an organisation of poor, self-employed women here in India. The main objective is to support and enable these women for a full emloyment so that they can make a decent living. SEWA has about 1 million members, of which about half reside in the state of Gujarat. Next to the representation of its members SEWA provides services such as insurance, banking, child and health care, education and training, housing, legal support and more. After having read the speech of SEWA at the United Nations assembly in 2008 I really understood what SEWA is all about.

Soon and I will take over from our predecessor team Manuel and Kensuke and work on the design of a new membership management system as well as on a concept for the use of ICT enabling SEWA to offer more services to its members and to work more efficiently.

The evening we spent close to the Ginger hotel at a nearby small lake and park within walking distance where we become an attraction, especially for the kids who love to have their pictures taken by us.